The un-wearing of the green

There's another good reason to vote in November. It's when the protective colors are stripped away.

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By CYNTHIA STEAD

capecodtimes.com

By CYNTHIA STEAD

Posted Oct. 11, 2012 at 2:00 AM

By CYNTHIA STEAD
Posted Oct. 11, 2012 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

There's another good reason to vote in November. It's when the protective colors are stripped away.

Looking at autumn foliage, I thought about how candidates and trees "turn." When days get colder, the green chlorophyll in leaves breaks down, revealing the actual color of the leaves. A political campaign subjects candidates to a cold scrutiny, and as it gets more intense the green veneer falls away, revealing what "color" their leaves had been all along.

The results of the presidential debate last week were unexpected, but that was because we expected to see the two men in their summer state. One turned out to be a maple who unexpectedly flamed into scarlet brilliance when the protective green was stripped away. The other was more of an oak, which had seemed strong and verdant, but when the true colors came out, he was revealed to be a dun color, with perhaps a tinge of yellow along the edges, which had no vibrancy or beauty — just withered and drooped, waiting to fall away.

The Mitt Romney who showed up for the debate was the person I met at the Statehouse. A gifted natural administrator who gets excited about budget lines, he talks faster and gets animated when discussing administrative changes. He has a palpable love of public service, and the debate showed his eagerness to overhaul the way government works, which is, after all, the actual job of a chief executive rather than symbolizing or advocating.

I wasn't prepared for how exasperated and bored President Obama appeared to be at the debate, but it may have to do with disliking having his ideas and pronouncements questioned — a hallmark of many progressives. They love to talk about diversity of ideas, and always seem surprised that there are any but their own.

We had another debate between the two Senate candidates. Elizabeth Warren was asked by the insufferable moderator, David Gregory, about the issue of her Native American heritage. She said she believed what her parents had told her and that she had gained no professional benefit from it. Sen. Scott Brown replied that the issue wasn't if she were or were not of Cherokee descent, it was that she spent five weeks insisting that she had no idea why Harvard had touted her as a minority hire, until forced to admit that she had self-identified in a college directory, unlikely to be seen by anyone but fellow academics.

I always thought this was a dumb issue. I am the mother of some 1/32nd Cherokee Indians myself, and they look a lot more Swedish than Sioux. Their dad is from Oklahoma and has a Cherokee great-grandmother, and when he and Warren were growing up, this wasn't a matter of pride but something to be kept quiet. Unless you were actually living on a reservation, it wasn't likely there would be any written records.

Warren has highlighted her "greenness" as a candidate. Her after-debate commercials focus on the naiveté of the person who has never run for any public office, leaning slightly forward and speaking earnestly into the camera about how she grew up knowing that her parents had to elope because of her mother's Indian heritage, but she isn't going to let any attack get her down.

But another commercial out there speaks to Brown's point about her actual, instead of televised, candor. The radio ad, with Warren's voice approving the message, features a sound bite of Brown being asked who he admired on the Supreme Court, and Brown answering Justice Scalia — although his quote stops a little abruptly. Actually, in the second half of the same sentence, Brown also praised Justice Kennedy for his "thoughtfulness." When Gregory insisted that he couldn't like both, Brown laughed and said that was the nice thing about being an independent — he could appreciate both. But you had to see the debate instead of listening to truncated quotes in Warren's ads to know that. That's not candid or earnest — that's Warren putting her name on a deliberate attempt to mislead, perhaps like claiming a "romantic" Native American history.

The turning of autumn leaves is where the phrase about your "true colors showing" comes from — and as the election gets closer, it's equally true for trees and for candidates.

Cynthia E. Stead lives in Dennis. She can be reached at cestead@gmail.com.